Watchdogs on Capitol Hill

There was nothing funny about the 2010 General Services Administration conference in Las Vegas that featured a clown, a mind reader and an overall taxpayer price tag of $820,000.

— Rep. Mike Coffman and Rep. Jackie Speier, March 18, 2013

Opinions may differ on that statement; in fact, more than one 'segment' of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart has made comedic capital out of the GSA's spree. But it is undeniable that the United States has an enormous public debt* and that wasteful spending within the federal government only makes things worse.

* Over $9 trillion according to the 2011 CIA World Factbook, under the definition of public debt as 'the total of all government borrowings less repayments that are denominated in a country's home currency." [Wikipedia]

***

THIS MONDAY, Reps. Jackie Speier and Mike Coffman wrote an op-ed for Politico to announce a Congressional Watchdog Caucus, which hopes to ease matters for federal employees and others who want to report misuses of funds and other problems within government.

For anyone who wants to report, the route is complex. There is more than one office (or, watchdog) which undertakes investigations and passes on preexisting records to those who request them.

Live Blog 2: Republican National Convention

After yesterday's hiatus in, er, reportage, here is the third and last day of the Republican National Convention from Tampa, Florida. I am watching it through C-Span's livestream.

"Baby elephant mud bathing Chobi, Botswana Photo"
by Lee R. Berger (Profberger)
via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Before we begin:
"Texas voter ID law is blocked," (August 30, 2012) Washington Post
 
THE U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia decided earlier today that Texas's new voter ID laws are discriminatory against African-Americans and Hispanics of modest means. An appeal to the Supreme Court is intended.

Republican lawmakers have argued that the voter ID law is needed to clean up voter rolls, [. . .] Texas, they argue, is asking for no more identification than people need to board an airplane, get a library card or enter many government buildings.

In South Carolina, voters would need to show a driver's license, DMV identification card, U.S. military ID, passport, or a photo ID which can be obtained from election workers in one's county free of charge. In Texas, the Department of Justice has estimated that anyone without a copy of their birth certificate would have to fork over at least $22.

Live Blog: Republican National Convention, August 28, 2012

"The eye of an asian elephant at Elephant Nature Park, Thailand",
photograph by Alexander Klink (2008)
From Wikimedia Commons, Licence (CC BY 3.0)

Warning: written from a pro-Democratic viewpoint. Of course I endeavour to present facts correctly; please do not assume that I have succeeded entirely, however. Please excuse typos, non-sequiturs, and other oddities.

As the US Republican Party's convention in advance of the November elections takes place in Tampa, Florida, I am following this second day of events through the government broadcaster C-Span's livestream.

6:41 p.m. EDT  (UTC-4:00) C-Span lady says the Convention is officially in recess until 7:15 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.

6:43 p.m. Philosophical West African lady telephoning in from New York State: Have civilized dialogue, not violent language. Mitt Romney and Barack Obama still have to work together after the election, no matter what happens.

6:56 p.m. Smarmy besuited young male individual waving "MITT" sign behind NBC news anchor Chuck Todd during his interview. We get it already, we really do.

7:02 p.m. Pale Texan delegate who has apparently not needed to be shielded from the sun for a while wearing cowboy hat is really incongruous. And he is at least one individual on Earth's green and blue sphere who would like to see former President G.W. Bush at the convention; still says he thinks it's tactically better for him to be absent. Is this the southern passive-aggression I've heard about?

7:04 p.m. A Hispanic lady who is for Romney-Ryan has been discovered!

7:07 p.m. Earlier at the convention: Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney were determined to be the nominees, which — as many a Twitter jokester commented — is an unforeseen contingency that threatens to capsize this Republican electoral season.

Convention begins again.

Wishful Thinking About Violence Against Women

REPUBLICAN congressman Steve King of Iowa has contributed his own remarks to the fray over Missouri congressman and senatorial candidate Todd Akin's contention that 'legitimate rape' almost never results in pregnancy. (A video of Rep. Akin's comments appeared on the web on August 19th; he has apologized since then.)

In an August 20th interview with the television station KMEG 14 (a CBS affiliate in Sioux City, Iowa), Rep. King replied to a question about how pregnancy after statutory rape (e.g. consensual sex between an adult man and a twelve-year-old girl) should be treated,

Well I just haven't heard of that being a circumstance that's been brought to me in any personal way and I'd be open to hearing discussion about that subject matter.

He was speaking in the Le Mars and Sioux Center, where he was campaigning, and the video of the news segment which includes his comments is on the television station's website. His spokesperson has since responded,

The "Virginia Earthquake" in a Nutshell

An earthquake that reached 5.8 on the Richter scale shook Virginia, Washington D.C. and New York City today, and it was felt, according to website commenter anecdotes, in states as far away as South Carolina, Georgia, Massachusetts, Ohio, Maine, and in Canada.

The event had a shallow focus at 6 kilometers' depth; it took place at precisely 17:53 UTC. Two aftershocks followed in the first hour, in the magnitudes 2.9 and 2.2. By coincidence there had been a 5.3-magnitude earthquake in Colorado earlier.

There was apparently no damage to public transportation in New York City. Trains in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania reportedly had to run at 25 mph as a precaution for possible aftershocks; the Washington D.C. metro was cleared so that it could be examined. Buildings like Goldman Sachs's and the City Hall were evacuated, however, and the Newark and John F. Kennedy airports were shortly shut down. The Pentagon in Virginia, and the White House and Capitol Building in D.C. were also cleared. Notable damage befell the spires of the National Cathedral — Wikipedia: "the sixth-largest cathedral in the world."

The North Anna nuclear facility, in Virginia near the epicentre,